Absence, hear thou my protestation
Against thy strength, distance, and length;
Do what thou canst for alteration:
For hearts of truest mettle
Absence doth join, and Time doth settle.
-John Donne
I am alone here in the still of the moment when the velvet ink coverlet of the night still shields the stars from the light.
Well, not really alone, I’m trying to keep two of my horses, Kit and Satchel, sort of where I put them whilst I take pictures of Jupiter and Venus.
Just below the horizon would be Mercury, if I could see it. Orion is just to the right of the Jupiter/Venus Conjunct, but still slightly below the horizon, and Cancer the Crab is below the horizon with one claw poking up into the conjunct, pincers snapping and missing.
Saturn is just to the right of the moon, and slightly down, and seemingly much smaller to the eye on earth. My phone dings, and it’s Laurie, one of our admin team. “I can’t see Saturn!” she texts. Chris is also on the chat. We’re out together, though separated by the distance and length of from me to Aroostook to Penobscot counties. Though I think John Donne had more dramatic intentions with his utterance, still, it is a lovely miracle of the modern world that we can be on chat together and work on everyone finding Saturn.
Tomorrow morning, we will still be able to see Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. The Perseids are still firing off fireballs- I saw four, standing out with the horses- and by August 17, we may be able to see Mercury joining Jupiter and Venus, with a crescent moon dipping down.
It would be lovely if horses would hold still whilst I was taking 3 second exposures. They do not.
